Pages

POS System

Friday, October 18, 2013

The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) threatened to
launch another strike, if the government failed to settle their salary
anomalies in Budget 2014.

FUTA Chairman, Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, said the government has so
far attended to only a few of their demands, even after a written undertaking
to attend to all of them in response to their trade union action. In these
circumstances, he said, FUTA would be compelled to resume their suspended trade
union action.

“We suspended our trade union
action, which lasted 99 days from 4 July 2012, in view of an agreement reached
with the Central Bank Governor that the government will appoint a five-member
committee headed by Minister D.E.W. Gunasekara to look into the salary issues
of the university teachers. We had nominated our two representatives about six
months ago, but the government has failed to appoint the committee as yet,”
FUTA Chairman charged.

He also said when the university
student intake was increased due to the ‘Z’ score bungle, the authorities
promised to increase teachers’ salaries by 25 per cent. “Those students are now
in their second semester, yet the promised salary increase is still pending,”
he pointed out.

Dr. Dewasiri accused the
government of failing to honour its promise to introduce procedures to resolve
university teachers’ salary anomalies within five years and also the promise to
stop political interferences into university affairs.

He also reminded the authorities that they are looking forward to the
forthcoming budget as the President had told them previously that the salary
matters can be resolved only through budgetary measures.

“We have appointed a three-member
committee to keep a tab on how they resolve our problems. Its report is
expected within one month. The government is under the impression that we
cannot amass a sufficient number to our trade union action. But we have already
proved that we can do it,” he said.

The university authorities have so far failed to call for registrations
for external degrees for the students who sat for their Advanced Level
examinations in 2010, the Student Union for the Protection of External Degrees
said today.

Addressing a media conference,
Convener of the Union, Madusanka Bandara, said the external degree programme
encountered various setbacks over the last few years, and that a large number
of students have not been able to register for a degree of their choice since
2010.

“The students who had passed
their A/Ls, but were not eligible to enter university due to low Z-scores, have
no way of pursuing their higher education as they have not been called for
registrations as yet. When we enquired from the authorities whether the
external degree programme has been scrapped, they replied in the negative. Yet,
no new intakes have been made, and the students are left stranded with nothing
to do,” he claimed.

Meanwhile, union co-convener,
Vindika Ratnayake, also addressing the briefing, questioned whether the reason
for registrations not being called for was the Private Universities Bill.

“If free education for all is one
of Sri Lanka’s policies, why aren’t registrations called for all these students
and why is the government pushing for private universities instead of working
on taking care of the public university students?” Ratnayake queried.

රාජ්‍යඅධ්‍යාපනයසඳහාඅයවැයෙන්6%ක්වෙන්කරනලෙසරජයටබලකරමින්පසුගියකාලයේවිශ්වවිද්‍යාලආචාර්යවරුන්විසින්විශාලඅරගලයක්ගෙනගියත්ඒයටආණ්ඩුවේන්කිසුඳුප්‍රතිචාරයක්නොදැක්වූඅතරඑහිදීවිශ්වවිද්‍යාලආචාර්යවරුන්අදවැනිතත්වයක්සිදුවේයැයිදබලධාරීන්ටඅවධාරණයකරසිටියේය.Extract from LankaTruthwww.lankauniversity-news.com